Gold Miners or Bullion?

How do stocks of gold miners perform compared to gold itself?

In their July 2025 paper entitled “Gold Shares Underperform Gold Bullion”, Dirk Baur, Lichoo Tay and Allan Trench examine the performance of gold miners relative to gold. They use VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) as a proxy for gold miners and SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) as a proxy for gold. Gold miners provide exposure to gold and additional exposures to equity and mining-related risks. Using daily and monthly data for GDX, GLD, some individual gold mining firms as available and gold bullion during May 2006 through April 2025, they find that: (more…)